Digital Commons Network^™

Review Of Current Healthcare Waste Management Methods And Their Effect On Global Health, Anushree Priyadarshini, Christina Kenny

Articles

Healthcare is a rapidly growing industry as medical treatments become more sophisticated, more in demand due to increasing incidence of chronic disease and more widely available worldwide. This booming industry is also creating more waste than ever before and, as such, there is a growing need to treat and dispose of this waste. Healthcare waste (HCW) disposal includes a multitude of disposal methods, including incineration, landfilling and chemical treatments. These rudimentary methods and their growing use present their own problems that negatively impact both the environ- ment and, in turn, damage public health, thus contributing to a global healthcare crisis. …

Plant Functional Groups And Species Contribute To Ecological Resilience A Decade After Woodland Expansion Treatments, Stephanie Freund, Beth A. Newingham, Jeanne C. Chambers, Alexandra K. Urza, Bruce A. Roundy, J. Hall Cushman

Articles

Woody plant expansions are altering ecosystem structure and function, as well as fire regimes, around the globe. Tree-reduction treatments are widely implemented in expanding woodlands to reduce fuel loads, increase ecological resilience, and improve habitat, but few studies have measured treatment outcomes over long timescales or large geographic areas. The Sagebrush Treatment Evaluation Project (SageSTEP) evaluated the ecological effects of prescribed fire and cut-and-leave treatments in sagebrush communities experiencing tree expansion in North American cold desert shrublands. We used 10 yr of data from the SageSTEP network to test how treatments interacted with pre-treatment tree dominance, soil climate, and time …

Affective Sentience And Moral Protection, Russell Powell, Irina Mikhalevich

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We have structured our response according to five questions arising from the commentaries: (i) What is sentience? (ii) Is sentience a necessary or sufficient condition for moral standing? (iii) What methods should guide comparative cognitive research in general, and specifically in studying invertebrates? (iv) How should we balance scientific uncertainty and moral risk? (v) What practical strategies can help reduce biases and morally dismissive attitudes toward invertebrates?

Is Gilti Constitutional?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

In this article, Avi-Yonah argues that the global intangible low-taxed income regime may be an unconstitutional attempt to tax the foreign-source income of foreign entities, and he offers an alternative.

Collaborative Behavior, Performance And Engagement With Visual Analytics Tasks Using Mobile Devices, Lei Chen, Hai-Ning Liang, Feiyu Lu, Konstantinos Papangelis, Ka Lok Man, Yong Yue

Articles

Interactive visualizations are external tools that can support users’ exploratory activities. Collaboration can bring benefits to the exploration of visual representations or visu‐ alizations. This research investigates the use of co‐located collaborative visualizations in mobile devices, how users working with two different modes of interaction and view (Shared or Non‐Shared) and how being placed at various position arrangements (Corner‐to‐Corner, Face‐to‐Face, and Side‐by‐Side) affect their knowledge acquisition, engagement level, and learning efficiency. A user study is conducted with 60 partici‐ pants divided into 6 groups (2 modes×3 positions) using a tool that we developed to support the exploration of 3D visual …

Associations Between Neighborhood Deprivation Index, Parent Perceptions And Preschooler Lifestyle Behaviors, Carolina Bassu, Clare Corish, John Kearney

Articles

Parental perceptions and use of neighborhood facilities are important factors that are related to children’s dietary intake and physical activity. The aim of this study was to examine the association between neighborhood deprivation index, parents’ perceptions of their neighborhood environment, and healthy/unhealthy markers of child dietary intake, physical activity, and TV screen time. This cross-sectional study was conducted in Dublin, Ireland. The lifestyle behaviors among children and parental perceptions of their neighborhood environment were reported by the parents of 276 children aged 3–5 years by using parent-completed questionnaires. Deprivation index was assessed using the geographic information system (GIS). Data were …

An Lpc Pole Processing Method For Enhancing The Identification Of Dominant Spectral Features, Jin Xu, Mark Davis, Ruairí De Fréin

Articles

This paper proposes a new time-resolved spectral analysis method based on a modification to the Linear Predictive Coding (LPC) method for enhancing the identification of the dominant frequencies of a signal. The method described here is based on a z-plane analysis of the LPC poles. These poles are used to produce a series of reduced order filter transfer functions which can accurately identify and estimate the frequency of the dominant spectral features. The standard LPC method has been shown to suffer from a sensitivity to noise and its performance is dependent on the filter order. The proposed method can accurately …

Impact Of A National Professional Development Programme For Out-Of-Field Teachers Of Mathematics In Ireland., Merrilyn Goos, Máire Ní Riordáin, Fiona Faulkner, Ciara Lane

Articles

Out-of-field teaching refers to the practice of assigning teachers to teach subjects that do not match their training or education. This paper reports on a study evaluating the impact of a national professional development programme for out-of-field teachers of post-primary school mathematics in Ireland – the Professional Diploma in Mathematics for Teaching. Evidence of impact was collected from three surveys. Two surveys evaluated changes in the prevalence of out-of-field teaching before and six years after the introduction of the programme. The third survey investigated programme graduates’ beliefs about mathematics, mathematics teaching and mathematics learning, and reported changes in teaching practices. …

Hybrid Modelling For Stroke Care: Review And Suggestions Of New Approaches For Risk Assessment And Simulation Of Scenarios, Tilda Herrgårdh, Vince I. Madai, John Kelleher, Rasmus Magnusson, Mika Gustafsson, Lili Milani, Peter Gennemark, Gunnar Cedersund

Articles

Stroke is an example of a complex and multi-factorial disease involving multiple organs, timescales, and disease mechanisms. To deal with this complexity, and to realize Precision Medicine of stroke, mathematical models are needed. Such approaches include: 1) machine learning, 2) bioinformatic network models, and 3) mechanistic models. Since these three approaches have complementary strengths and weaknesses, a hybrid modelling approach combining them would be the most beneficial. However, no concrete approach ready to be implemented for a specific disease has been presented to date. In this paper, we both review the strengths and weaknesses of the three approaches, and propose …

Application Of Big-Data For Epidemiological Studies Of Refractive Error, Michael Moore, James Loughman, John Butler, Arne Ohlendorf, Siegfried Wahl, Daniel Ian Flitcroft

Articles

Purpose

To examine whether data sourced from electronic medical records (EMR) and a large industrial spectacle lens manufacturing database can estimate refractive error distribution within large populations as an alternative to typical population surveys of refractive error.

Subjects

A total of 555,528 patient visits from 28 Irish primary care optometry practices between the years 1980 and 2019 and 141,547,436 spectacle lens sales records from an international European lens manufacturer between the years 1998 and 2016.

Methods

Anonymized EMR data included demographic, refractive and visual acuity values. Anonymized spectacle lens data included refractive data. Spectacle lens data was separated into lenses …

In Situ Water Quantification In Natural Deep Eutectic Solvents Using Portable Raman Spectroscopy, Suha Elderderi, Laura Wils, Charlotte Leman-Loubière, Hugh Byrne, Igor Chourpa, Cécile Enguehard-Gueiffier, Emilie Munnier, Abdalla A. Elbashir, Leslie Boudesocque-Delaye, Franck Bonnier

Articles

Raman spectroscopy is a cost-effective, label free and non-destructive analytical tool [1] that delivers specific molecular information to enable the determination of the chemical composition of samples within seconds, with minimum or no requirements for sample preparation. The technique is based on the illumination of samples with a monochromatic laser source, resulting in a fraction of the light being inelastically scattered (the Raman effect) which can be collected as spectral signatures [2]. Raman spectroscopy is considered as an approach well suited for the monitoring and control of chemical and pharmaceutical processes [3,4], end point prediction of chemical synthesis reactions [5] …

Social Mobilization In Partisan Spaces, Florian Foos, Peter John, Christian Muller, Kevin Cunningham

Articles

Three decades ago Huckfeldt and Sprague hypothesised that partisan context constrains information sharing between neighbours. We develop their theory to identify implications for campaign mobilisation in homogeneous and mixed-partisan contexts. We argue that GOTV spillover effects should vary with the proportion of rival party supporters in a neighbourhood. Based on two samples of households that were either included or excluded pre-random assignment from a street-level GOTV experiment, we test this expectation of differential spillover effects. We estimate neighbourhood party preferences based on targeting data made available by the UK Labour Party. We find that spillover effects on party supporters are …

Cytotoxic Effects Of 5-Azacytidine On Primary Tumour Cells And Cancer Stem Cells From Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma: An In Vitro Ftirm Analysis, Valentina Notarstefano, Alessia Belloni, Simona Sabbatini, Chiara Pro, Giulia Orilisi, Riccardo Monterubbianesi, Vincenzo Tosco, Hugh Byrne, Lisa Vaccari, Elisabetta Giorgini

Articles

In the present study, the cytotoxic effects of 5-azacytidine on primary Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma cells (OSCCs) from human biopsies, and on Cancer Stem Cells (CSCs) from the same samples, were investigated by an in vitro Fourier Transform InfraRed Microscospectroscopy (FTIRM) approach coupled with multivariate analysis. OSCC is an aggressive tumoral lesion of the epithelium, accounting for ~90% of all oral cancers. It is usually diagnosed in advanced stages, and this causes a poor prognosis with low success rates of surgical, as well as radiation and chemotherapy treatments. OSCC is frequently characterised by recurrence after chemotherapy and by the development …

A Review Of The Fractal Market Hypothesis For Trading And Market Price Prediction, Jonathan Blackledge, Marc Lamphiere

Articles

This paper provides a review of the Fractal Market Hypothesis (FMH) focusing on financial times series analysis. In order to put the FMH into a broader perspective, the Random Walk and Efficient Market Hypotheses are considered together with the basic principles of fractal geometry. After exploring the historical developments associated with different financial hypotheses, an overview of the basic mathematical modelling is provided. The principal goal of this paper is to consider the intrinsic scaling properties that are characteristic for each hypothesis. In regard to the FMH, it is explained why a financial time series can be taken to be …

Promises Made, Promises Broken: The Anatomy Of Idaho's School Funding Litigation, John E. Rumel

Articles

This Article discusses the protracted Idaho Schools for Equal Educational Opportunity ("ISEEO") K-12 school funding litigation in Idaho - litigation initiated by plaintiffs under Idaho's state constitutional education clause in the early 1990s, which resulted in six reported decisions by the Idaho Supreme Court and two additional decisions in follow-on federal and state court cases and which, although leading to the state Supreme Court's affirming the trial court's determination that the Idaho legislature had failed to adequately fund public education under the thoroughness provision of the education clause, resulted in the state high court's dismissing the case without addressing the …

Labor Organization In Ride-Sharing: Unionization Or Cartelization?, Mark Anderson

Articles

The sharing economy brings together the constituent parts of a business enterprise into a structure that, on its surface, resembles a business firm, but in crucial ways is nothing like the traditional firm. This includes the ownership of the primary capital assets used in the business, as well as one of the most fundamental features of a firm-the relationship with its labor force. Sharing economy workers are formally contractors, running small businesses as sole entrepreneurs, with the effect that they are excluded from many of the protections made available to workers across the economy. The result is a seeming disparity …

Fashion, Models, And Intellectual Property, Andres Sawicki

Articles

In this Article, I revisit the impact of Professor Kal Raustiala and Professor Christopher Sprigman 's landmark article, The Piracy Paradox. Their work identified an empirical anomaly that was difficult to explain in light of the standard justification for intellectual property rights: although IP law does not grant meaningful exclusivity in novel fashion designs, the fashion industry invests significant resources developing those novel designs. To account for this anomaly, The Piracy Paradox shifted the focus from the supply side of innovation to the demand side. The standard justification emphasized that innovators face threats of copying that they cannot easily …

Symposium: The Roberts Court And Free Speech: Transcript, Michael Cahill, Joel Gora, Geoffrey Stone

Articles

No abstract provided.

Valuation Blunders In The Law Of Eminent Domain, Richard Epstein

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No abstract provided.

Limiting The Pardon Power, Albert W. Alschuler

Articles

Although our government is said to be one of checks and balances, the president’s power “to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States” appears to be unlimited. In granting this power, the Framers deliberately cast structural safeguards aside. Nevertheless, the presidency of Donald Trump prompted a search for limits. This Article examines: (1) whether a president may pardon crimes that have not yet happened (or announce his intention to do so); (2) whether he may pardon himself; (3) whether he may use pardons to obstruct justice or commit other crimes; (4) whether criminal statutes should be construed …

Chevronizing Around Cost-Benefit Analysis, Jonathan Masur, Eric Posner

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No abstract provided.

The Boundaries Of Normative Law And Economics, Eric Posner

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No abstract provided.

An Ensemble Approach For Annotating Source Code Identifiers With Part-Of-Speech Tags, Christian D. Newman,, Michael J. Decker, Reem S. Alsuhaibani, Anthony Peruma, Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, Satyajit Mohapatra, Tejal Vishnoi, Marcos Zampieri, Timothy Sheldon, Emily Hill

Articles

This paper presents an ensemble part-of-speech tagging approach for source code identifiers. Ensemble tagging is a technique that uses machine-learning and the output from multiple part-of-speech taggers to annotate natural language text at a higher quality than the part-of-speech taggers are able to obtain independently. Our ensemble uses three state-of-the-art part-of-speech taggers: SWUM, POSSE, and Stanford. We study the quality of the ensemble's annotations on five different types of identifier names: function, class, attribute, parameter, and declaration statement at the level of both individual words and full identifier names. We also study and discuss the weaknesses of our tagger to …

Language Policy-Making In Ireland: A Preliminary Study Of The Consultation Process Of Languages Connect, Iker Erdocia, Susanna Nocchi, Mary Ruane

Articles

This study aims to explore the policy-making process of Languages Connect - Ireland’s Strategy for Foreign Languages in Education 2017-2026. For that purpose, we concentrate on the consultation process adopted by the Department of Education and Skills. Drawing on a concept of foreign language competence as human capital, the aim of this study is twofold. Firstly, we investigate the extent to which the submissions to the consultation process form a sequence with the final document, Languages Connect; secondly, we examine the Irish government documents and compare the submissions reflecting the government approach to language with those problematising such discourse. The …

Nature Based Solution As Flood Protection Strategies: The Case Of Caraha River Park, Brazil, Renata V. De Oliveira Gobetti, Ornella Salimbene, Deborah Panepinto

Articles

Following the road paradigm, many cities, at the beginning of the 20th century, experienced a reckless increase in the number of vehicles on the road causing an unsustainable urban and environmental situation. The origin of the problem surely lies in the occupation of the preserved areas. In many South American states, for example, highways generally ignore the presence of environmental obstacles (such as rivers) as they may cause a “delay in modernization”. As a result, riparian forests are invaded and turned into highways, water beds are channeled and most rivers are contaminated with wastewater. Due to the occupation of green …

Work And Employment For Daca Recipients, Geoffrey Heeren

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No abstract provided.

Imagining The Future In Irish Budgets 1970–2015: A Mixed-Methods Discourse Analysis, Ewan Macdonald, Brendan K. O'Rourke, John Hogan

Articles

Annual budgets are key to constituting and governing imagined futures. This paper examines how the signifier ‘future’ is constructed within the Irish budget speeches delivered by finance ministers to parliament between 1970 and 2015. To investigate the discourses of these budget speeches, we employ post-structural discourse theory operationalised through two methods: close reading and corpus-linguistic analysis. Close reading is used to identify the discourses employed and how meanings of signifiers were partially fixed at different moments. This was further examined using corpus-linguistics, specifically a collocate analysis of the word ‘future’, allowing further close examination of such collocates in context. Thus, …

The Non-First Amendment Law Of Speech, Genevieve Lakier

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No abstract provided.

Competing Algorithms For Law: Sentencing, Admissions, And Employment, Saul Levmore, Frank Fagan

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No abstract provided.

Long Live The Federal Power Act’S Bright Line, Joshua Macey

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No abstract provided.